“What do you seek,” she asked.
“I have been betrayed, but I am still in danger. I wish to know whom I should
fear most and where I might be safe.”
Illyra’s face relaxed into unemotional blank-ness. Her expressionless eyes
stared into him. “The steel brings enemies, doesn’t it?”
Though he had seen her in scrying trances before, the change chilled Walegrin.
Yet he believed totally in her gifts since she had read the pottery fragment
which had led him to the ore. “Yes, the steel brings enemies. Will it be the
death of me? Is it the final link in a S’danzo forged chain?”
“Give me your sword,” she demanded.
He handed her the Enlibar blade. Illyra stared at it a while then ran her palms
along the flat and touched the edge tenderly with her fingertips. She set the
metal on her table and sat motionless for so long that Walegrin began to fear
for her. He had started for the door when her eyes widened and she called his
name.
“The future has been clouded since I gave birth, Walegrin, but your future is as
the fog to the sun.
“Steel belongs to no man but to itself alone- this steel even more so. It reeks
of gods and magic, places the S’danzo do not see. But unless your betrayers work
through the gods they will have no power over you. There is intrigue, treachery
but none of it will harm you or the steel.”
“What of the men of Ranke? Have they forgotten me? When I go north-“
“You will not go north,” she said, taking hold of the sword again.
“‘Lyra, I’m going north with my men and the swords.”
“You will not go north.”